


Gone, But Never Forgotten

by GrangerPeavon



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: F/M, M/M, Magical Stiles Stilinski, Mostly cannon complient, Seperation, Sorry Not Sorry, Tons of OCs
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-11-19
Updated: 2015-11-19
Packaged: 2018-05-02 09:58:06
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,647
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5244083
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GrangerPeavon/pseuds/GrangerPeavon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Derek left. It's not a surprise. What is surprising, though, is the story of how he comes home.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Gone, But Never Forgotten

**Author's Note:**

> I started writing because I was bored in class. It's now 20 handwritten pages.... I only plan to type the first half until I know if anyone likes it. Sorry, but it's sooooo much to type when I don't even know if people are going to read it.

No one really expected Derek to come back. After being gone 2 years, there was a collective acceptance that he wasn’t coming back. Everyone dealt with this differently. Scott became determined that Derek would have something to come home to, and began to try in earnest to fix the problems within the pack. 

Lydia, as much as she claimed she didn’t care, began insisting that records be kept of everything that happens within the pack. And on the very rare occasion she was caught off guard, one may see a glimpse of her writing letters detailing every emotion behind every decision and event in her meticulous record books. And if each letter was addressed to a certain former alpha, well, no one was any the wiser. 

None of the new pack really understood the significance of Derek Hale. The stories were more legend than anything, even if three of the main characters sat before their eyes. They respected him, idolized him a little even, but none of them thought of him as a real person.

Strangely, or maybe not so strangely, Stiles was the one who took the other’s departure the hardest. For a week after the initial departure, he seemed to be coasting along, never truly present. Everyone made a point to avoid him at the beginning, barring Scott and Lydia, who gave him space without cutting him off. Eventually, he pulled himself together and returned to normal. 

On the outside.

Behind closed doors, he became a shell of what he once was, hardly finding the will to continue without his usual audience. It was during such a time that he found himself blankly staring at a wall, emotions coming and going with his memories, when suddenly the wall was a deep, swirling  
green. 

After he found himself blowing up the threat of the week a third time, he he decided maybe it was time to go to Deaton, especially because this time, his emotions felt as though they had been ripped from him, leaving him hopeless and hollow. 

In a shocking turn of events, Deaton turned out to be very helpful. When Stiles showed up at the clinic with a blank expression, he merely sighed and ordered the younger to sit while he brewed some mysterious concoction. They sat in silence while Stiles drank the awful mixture, each sip loosening his chest and making him feel more like his old self than he has in months. 

Once the mixture was gone, Deaton turned to him with unfathomable eyes. “So, Mr. Stilinski, are you ready?” 

There was no context to the question, no possible way for Stiles to know what the other was referring to, but all the same, something deep inside of him surged up to growl 

“Yes.”

~!~

By year three of Derek being gone, The Pack had learned how to keep themselves together enough to actually deserve that name. Now, every threat was not going to tear them apart, figuratively or literally. 

Lydia was accepted to MIT, scoffing in Scott’s face when he said he understood if she needed space from the Pack. She promptly set to mandating that he keep her apprised of all Pack matters, no matter how trivial. 

Stiles, who had begun training with Deaton since only a handful of months after Derek left, had decided that Berkley was too far before Scott put his foot down and played his final card on the matter. 

“It was where you and your mom wanted you to go.” 

After that, Stiles threw himself into his magical studies, determined to leave his pack with as much protection as possible. 

He ended up warding the town heavily, barring any creature with ill-will towards the town or it’s inhabitants to have a sudden hole in memory as to why they were going there. Deaton helped him draft ways to connect with his Pack, even if not there in body. After each member had a drafted connection, he demanded Deaton etch them into his skin, each member having a knot that would forever tie them. The whole process took three days and lined his biceps evenly on each side with the exception of Scott’s, which was positioned mid forearm, to make it the easiest accessible, as well as a small cluster on the underside of each forearm in memoriam of those who have either passed through or passed on. And if there was an extra knot over his heart that looked suspiciously like a certain other tattoo some of them had seen, no one mentioned it. 

~!~  
By his junior year of college, Stiles had become almost ridiculously intuned with the connections to his pack, even Lydia’s, which had always had a slightly muted feel because of her banshee status.  
Emotions could be passed through the bond, but only if both parties were willing. Or Stiles was pushing hard enough. They discovered this was a thing when a one-night stand went very badly very quickly in Stiles’ freshman year, ending with him drugged and tied to his bed.

Scott, basically drowning in Stiles’ fear and anger, showed up at his apartment and escorted the guy to the police station before coming back to help Stiles work out his feelings and purge himself and his dorm room of the other. That night was the first time Scott saw Stiles cry since Derek left. 

But something else came from that day, something Stiles himself couldn’t fully comprehend. Since then, a mysterious sensation had been bugging him about the knot that may or may not have been for the ex alpha. He eventually took it to Deaton, demanding to know if the other had connected it without his knowledge. 

Deaton simply raised an eyebrow. “Think clearly, Stiles.” His hands never faltered in the stitching of a nervous Chow. “ You know I cannot do that without your consent and acceptance, let alone without the other’s.” He snipped the thread carefully, covering the area in antiseptic and a bandage. “And you also know that mark was thought of, created for and set into place for a single person, there is no way for me to connect you or the sigil to anything other than the designated object.”

Stiles felt his stomach drop. “Is there a way to force a connection?” He never wanted to connect the other to a place or people he never wanted to see again. He’d had enough of his life taken away. He deserves this freedom. 

Deaton hummed thoughtfully, patting the Chow absently. “Usually, I’d say no, but you’ve proven me wrong far too many times for me to not proceed with caution to answer that.”  
Stiles grinned at that. “Good to know I can keep you on your toes, doc.”

Deaton clasped a companionable hand to his former student’s shoulder. “You have been the cause of more than a few grey hairs, yes.”

So Stiles resigned himself to not knowing if the strange tugging sensation at his chest was his mind playing tricks on him or a sign of a connection. 

Maybe it was a sign of self-growth that he didn’t try to force an answer.  
~!~

Graduation was an ordeal.

The Sheriff, ever the loving father, had found him a small loft style apartment right above a shop in Beacon Hills. With a little needling, he admitted it had been a drug den and front. 

Stiles loved it.

He was moving home with two degrees, one in mythology and the other in business management. All his boxes were stacked precariously in the U Haul, ready to make the drive when Scott drove up with a van full of very cramped werewolves and a small sedan following. 

Out piled the Pack.

Traci was the first out, grinning from ear to ear. She’d found them after being bitten by an alpha up in Oregon. Her former pack had been wiped out, but by her account, they deserved everything that was coming to them. None of them pushed her for answers as to what that may mean. 

After Traci came Samuel, happily clinging to Stiles. Samuel had only been 4 when his pack had been ambushed and killed. He knew enough at that point to control himself a bit, but being in the system was not an option. After being contacted by an acquaintance working the case, the Sheriff said he could take him in while they arranged for a pack to take him. He had found a place less than two months later as Scott’s adopted son. 

Stiles was passed from person to person; Kenny, who had come to them as an omega looking for sanctuary from hunters, Jo, who walked into their lives one day, guns blazing, and never walked out, Rachel, who had passed out in front of Stiles’ dormroom freshman year with a cursed amulet searing the skin of her chest away, and Brady, who looked like he could kill a man for looking at him wrong, but was really a marshmallow, abandoned by his pack because he never wanted to kill. 

 

After being passed from hand to hand, finally Stiles ended up crushed against Scott, Kira wiggling in with her baby bump.

“Good to see you, man.” Scott laughed after letting go his best friend. 

Stile threw an arm around his neck as he turned to kiss Kira’s cheek. “I was home last month, Scott.” He laughed, “There was hardly time to miss me.”

The doors to the sedan opened, revealing Melissa. A bit more grey streaked her hair than when the boys graduated high school, but she still held herself with the same confidence as before. From the passenger side crawled Owen, barely waving before he was a the back, pulling a babbling Erin from her car seat. The pair had moved to town to run from Erin’s mother, who had convinced herself that she had birthed a monster and needed to purge it from the world, almost succeeding before Owen had intervened. They had decided to stay after Stiles took the memories connected to werewolves, making it to where she only remembered hating the child, not the reason. 

As the pair joined the group, Erin waving at him wildly to be held, Stiles looked around at his Pack, his family. The rush of affection surged through him, and, as it did, he couldn’t help but think he felt something tug at his chest in what felt like a longing way. 

Maybe that’s when he realized the connection was not only one sided.  
~!~  
A key component of the tattoos was that Stiles could, conceivably, find any member of his pack at any given point. 

They’d tested it out a few times with Scott and Brady running, waiting for Stiles to find them. At the time, there had been a playful lilt to the instinct that told him where to go.

But on the day he woke feeling the need to go, just get up and drive for his pack, there was a distinct feeling of desperation to the pull. He was up and out of bed before he realized none of his pack ties were the one glowing. They had spread all the way to his forearms now that the pack was so large. Instead, the knot over his heart was glowing, a light blue sheen, burning in a way that he knew meant pain.

On auto-pilot, he called Scott. 

The alpha answered on the third ring, grumbling. “Kira’s gonna kill you if you wake Kiki.”

Stiles struggled to find his voice, taking long enough that Scott noticed. “Stiles?” there was shuffling. “You okay, man?” 

Finally, Stiles managed to speak around the mass in his throat. “Derek.” He gasped. “Something’s wrong, Scott. He feels like he’s dying.” 

The other line was silent for a few seconds, then, “Pack a bag. I’m coming to get you.” Scott demanded before hanging up. 

Stiles complied, trying to force his mind onto the task at hand and away from the possibilities that this situation could turn out as. 

Scott pulled up in front of his shop just as Stiles was locking the door. When he’d come home from college, he’d decided to open a bakery/tea shop, using his background in herbology. He called it Wolfeine. He thought it was hilarious. 

Stile climbed in the car, passing Scott his cup of coffee before ordering, “East on the Interstate, North when you can.”

Scott nodded, trying to sneak glances at Stiles in a way that he thought was subtle. 

Before they got to the Interstate, Stiles dialed Lydia, knowing they would regret not telling her if they didn’t do it now. 

She picked up with a growled, “What, Stiles?”

“Scott and I are leaving.” Stiles said as nonchalantly as possible. “We need you to hold down the fort while we deal with a thing up north.”

“Stiles.” Her voice had shaken all vestiges of sleep. “What happened?”

Gnawing nervously on his bottom lip, Stiles swallowed, “We don’t know yet.”

“Well give me your best guess.” She sassed. The expression on her face as evident in her tone. 

“I think it’s Derek.” Stiles rushed out. “Something’s wrong, and my mojo is telling me that it’s a pack member, but the knot that’s lighting up is the one that was not supposed to be tied to anyone officially. And maybe it’s nothing, but I really just need to figure out what’s going on. So I’d really appreciate if you could just make sure that things there don’t go to shit.”

Lydia sighed the sigh of the long-suffering on the other end of the line. “Fine, but I expect updated.” Stiles hummed his agreement. “I’m serious, Stiles. Updates, every few hours. Five hours go by without one, I’m sending your dad to find you and he will not be happy.”

“You’re the best, Lyds.” Stiles sighed, relieved.

“Yes, I know.” She preened. “Now I have to go pull Traci out of bed to get your shop ready for the day. Don’t die, and don’t come back maimed or cursed.” She ordered before hanging up. 

Stiles sat frozen in his seat for a few seconds before Scott put a hand on his shoulder. “You good?” He murmured. 

With a nod, Stiles pulled his legs up to his chest, cradling his coffee cup to his chest. The familiar smell calmed him. He could feel the edges of his magic starting to become agitated at the back of his mind, a deep buzz at the base of his skull that promised disaster if left unchecked. Taking a deep breath of coffee scented air, Stiles began his meditations. His magic was useful, but intuned with his emotions, therefore more volatile. Losing control meant bursts of power, and the car needed to be in a single piece. 

Neither car occupant spoke for almost two hours, Stiles trying to cap his rampant thoughts and Scott recognizing that distraction was not going to help. 

Just as the sun was about to break the horizon, Scott spoke. “Unless it’s at the next exit we need to stop for gas, man.”

Stiles jumped, pulled from his meditation. “We’re closer, but you should get gas. It’s not for a long time.” Guilt began to flow through him at the realization that he had left his best friend in silence for nearly two hours and that was all he could tell him for it. This wasn’t the first time his magic had dragged them out of bed at some god forsaken hour, and his alpha had yet to lodge a complaint about it. 

While Scott filled the tank, Stiles bought him three bags of the beef jerky that smelled terrible, but Scott loved. 

When Scott climbs back into the car after disappearing for a bit, he has a bag of Reese's Pieces. 

After a silent conversation telling each other that there is nothing for them to apologize for, each took their respective gifts, smiling.


End file.
